Generosity: Digging Deep, But Not for Cash

What does it mean to be generous – not just with money but with your heart and spirit?

And as fundraisers, whose job is it to be generous? Is it possible YOUR generosity might be more important than your donor’s?

Most of us, especially in the world of philanthropy, understand something about being generous with money. For a start, we come to understand not everyone IS generous with money, that having money doesn’t mean people give it away.

We begin to understand that our best donors, the ones who generously give money to nonprofits, also get that it FEELS GOOD to give and to help.

But recently, I’ve had the chance to double-click on some deeper applications of generosity, applications that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with feeling good.

Here’s an example from my life:

For some of us, as our parents age, their commitment to the rules and details of reality wanes.

And regularly I find that the rule follower in me jumps in to correct and to straighten out any confused details. I am helping to orient– or at least to un-disorient – right?

But after, I feel icky. It never feels good to be *that* person, the stickler about details.

And the word generous came up recently about these interactions … and has invited me to wonder if I might not actually find a more generous space – a place where I show up, give the gift of my attention and … play along.

My partner Kevin shared a story with me about his own father, who died with dementia in 2020. One day during a visit, his father was telling him a story about killing a dragon.

Hunh?

It was disorienting, he recalled, because it was very detailed, and his father really believed it happened.

Upon corroborating facts with his father’s girlfriend later, he discovered that his father did have a story: he had been out in the garden and got harassed by … not a dragon, but a dragonfly. Which he eventually swatted away.

And Kevin had an a-ha: how, in an eroding ecosystem, an interaction with a large insect could easily morph into something more story-worthy.

And he understood that a good story made his dad happy. So, then, it wasn’t hard for him to create that generous space and play along.

And that’s a kind of generosity that is different from cash.

Many of us get stuck in a world where there are dragonflies, but no dragons – where we are attached to our reality, to the rules as we see them.

Where we are so attached, in fact, that we can’t make space for someone else’s experience. Where rightness or sticking to the story feel more important than our own generosity.

So, to my fellow fundraisers and humans, here’s an inquiry to help you transcend the world of dragonflies: How might you expand your definition of generosity in service of your own and your donors’ humanity?